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Judge DeKalb Reviews History of Lewistown from Founding
Editor's note: Have you wondered why Lewistown's streets are on an angle, instead of going
north and south and east and west?
Judge Leonard DeKalb, pioneer attorney answered this puzzler and told much of the history of
Lewistown in a recent talk he gave.
Since the history was such a complete one, and provides a real addition to the written records of
this community, his speech is reported in full, as follows:
Lewistown has been an incorporated city for 50 years. That is only a milestone in her history.
The original townsite of Lewistown was platted on a portion of the patented homestead of
Francis A. Janeaux, by William T. McFarland, in 1882. The Janeaux homestead was one of the
first patented in the Judith Basin. The patent is dated October 10, 1882.
William T. McFarland was a chain man with a Northern Pacific survey party when that railroad
was projected through the Territory of Montana. So little was he was versed in the art ofland
surveys that his first survey described land a quarter of a mile away. When I came to Lewistown
four years after Lewistown became an incorporated city, McFarland was keeping bachelor
quarters at the intersection of Janeaux and Fourth Ave., where the filling station of Neal Smith is
now located, and where he was ekeing out an existence as a justice of the peace.
Just why Lewistown was laid out an angle has been the subject of speculation for at least 50
years. It was not even platted on an angle of 45 degrees. In the various surveys since that time,
the different engineers have determined the angle as 46 degrees 40 minutes, or some other angle
not consistent at all with McFarland's idea. About 1912 McFarland was committed to the asylum
at Warm Springs, where he later died.
Dr. L.A. Lapalme, a physician who was located at Lewistown as early as 1882, and for many
years afterwards, throws considerable light upon the peculiar bias of our streets and their
deviation from the land surveys and gives us the probably explanation of the first mapping of the
original townsite, which likely was followed later by McFarland when he prepared the plat for
recording. He wrote the following interesting explanation:
"In 1881 and 1882 a certain number of people had suggested to F.A. Janeaux, that his place
being a good site for a trading point, he ought to layout a certain portion of his land for a village.
He put off the matter until the summer of 1882, when he proved up on his land. Contemplating
the erection of a building for his store and as the school trustees were to build a school house he
concluded to plat a portion of his land and asked me to do the work. "At that time a part of his
farn1 was fenced in and under cultivation: it was that piece comprised between the southeast line
of Main Street, the creek and the south line of the 40. As we did not figure on a town, but only
expected a small village of 10 to 15 houses. Mr. Janeaux did not want to derange his field, so I
took the fence for a starting line. This is the reason why the streets of Lewistown are not running
with the main points of the compass. With a tape line I measured the blocks on each side of Main
Street and made a map--mining camp style--without a survey."

Judge DeKalb Reviews History of Lewistown from Founding
8-16-1949
Editor's note: Have you wondered why Lewistown's streets are on an angle, instead of going north and south and east and west?
Judge Leonard DeKalb, pioneer attorney answered this puzzler and told much of the history of Lewistown in a recent talk he gave.
Since the history was such a complete one, and provides a real addition to the written records of this community, his speech is reported in full, as follows:
Lewistown has been an incorporated city for 50 years. That is only a milestone in her history. The original townsite of Lewistown was platted on a portion of the patented homestead of Francis A. Janeaux, by William T. McFarland, in 1882. The Janeaux homestead was one of the first patented in the Judith Basin. The patent is dated October 10, 1882.
William T. McFarland was a chain man with a Northern Pacific survey party when that railroad was projected through the Territory of Montana. So little was he was versed in the art of land surveys that his first survey described land a quarter of a mile away. When I came to Lewistown four years after Lewistown became an incorporated city, McFarland was keeping bachelor quarters at the intersection of Janeaux and Fourth Ave., where the filling station of Neal Smith is now located, and where he was ekeing out an existence as a justice of the peace.
Just why Lewistown was laid out an angle has been the subject of speculation for at least 50 years. It was not even platted on an angle of 45 degrees. In the various surveys since that time, the different engineers have determined the angle as 46 degrees 40 minutes, or some other angle not consistent at all with McFarland's idea. About 1912 McFarland was committed to the asylum at Warm Springs, where he later died.
Dr. L.A. Lapalme, a physician who was located at Lewistown as early as 1882, and for many years afterwards, throws considerable light upon the peculiar bias of our streets and their deviation from the land surveys and gives us the probably explanation of the first mapping of the original townsite, which likely was followed later by McFarland when he prepared the plat for recording. He wrote the following interesting explanation:
"In 1881 and 1882 a certain number of people had suggested to F.A. Janeaux, that his place being a good site for a trading point, he ought to lay out a certain portion of his land for a village. He put off the matter until the summer of 1882, when he proved up on his land. Contemplating the erection of a building for his store and as the school trustees were to build a school house he concluded to plat a portion of his land and asked me to do the work. "At that time a part of his farm was fenced in and under cultivation: it was that piece comprised between the southeast line of Main Street, the creek and the south line of the 40. As we did not figure on a town, but only expected a small village of 10 to 15 houses. Mr. Janeaux did not want to derange his field, so I took the fence for a starting line. This is the reason why the streets of Lewistown are not running with the main points of the compass. With a tape line I measured the blocks on each side of Main Street and made a map--mining camp style--without a survey."
I hope that someday a fairly complete biography of Francis A. Janeaux, the French-Canadian squaw man, will come from the pen of Margaret Jackson, who is engaged in writing our local history. He died March 25, 1888, and most of the few early settlers who knew him have passed to their final reward. The family consisted of his widow, Virginia, then 29, who later married Joe Pratt, and of a son Odilion Janeaux, 13, and a daughter, Evelyn, 9, who married Irene Desy. The ranks of those who knew these surviving members of the Janeaux family are rapidly thinning and Virginia, Odilion, and Evelyn are long since deceased.
Just where the idea originated that we celebrated the 75th anniversary of our now fair city, I am unable to say. It may stem from the fact that a trading post was established at the junction of Casino creek by the Honorable Peter Koch from the Bozeman area, in 1873. History is always more accurate when recorded by a contemporary, and we will let Peter Koch tell us in his own words the establishment of this trading post. This statement is taken from a letter to members of the United States geological survey who were working on a report of the mineral resources of the Judith Mountains in the early 90's of the last century.
"The region was traversed frequently by trappers and hunters all through the early part of this century, but the first visit by white men of which I find any record is by Father DeSmet, Sept. 13, 1846. He gives an interesting account of a meeting within the basin of a peace congress of various Indian tribes.
"The next mention is in a report of the explorations of lieut, John Mullan through the basin from west to east on July 22-25, 1860. Before that, however, in September, 1853, it was visited by Lieutenant Mullan who was sent out by Governor Stevens in the exploration for a Pacific railroad route to find a camp of the Flatheads, and who passed through the Judith Basin going out through the gap.
"In 1869 Captain Clift, 30th infantry, surveyed a wagon road from Ft. Ellis to the mouth of the Musselshell river going through the basin, and a freight train went over it at this time. All this time there were no settlements of any kind in the basin.
"In the winter of 1872-73 Major F. D. Pease negotiated a treaty with the Crows, according to which they were to give up their reservation on the Yellowstone and accept in lieu of it the Judith Basin. This treaty was never ratified by the senate and therefore came to nothing; but anticipating that this removal would take place, Messrs. Story and Hoffman, who were the traders to the Crows, engaged me to go down into the basin and establish a trading post. Captain Gross, an employee of the Crow agency, went also to select a site for the new agency.
"A site was selected just below the mouth of Big Casino creek, on the south bank of Big Spring creek, and when the ox train with the goods and supplies had arrived I built there, during November and December, 1873, the first permanent houses within the Judith Basin. While waiting in idleness for the arrival of the train, the boys put in most of their time with an old deck of cards playing casino, and we accordingly named the creek we were camped on "Big Casino" and a little spring creek just below "Little Casino." and I was much amused years after on seeing Colonel Ludlow's map that these names had been perpetuated.
"The basin was then the finest game country I ever saw, swarming with buffalo, elk, and deer. The white-tail deer were especially plentiful in the pine coulees which ran down through the foothills from the mountains, and their tameness showed that they had been very little hunted. Small bands of crows came in to trade all through the winter, and we had considerable trouble from war parties of Sioux who came in to steal horses. One white man was killed by them.
"I left there in March, 1874, when it became evident that the removal of the Crows would not take place, and T. I. Dawes took charge of the post, which I had named Fort Sheridan [Sherman].
"That year Carroll was established on the Missouri river, and a wagon road was opened from that point to Helena, running through the basin. Meanwhile, Major Reed, an old Indian trader, had purchased the trading store from Story and Hoffman and moved it down Big Spring creek about a mile and a half, where it became known as Reed's Fort, and a hard place it was.
"A military post, Camp Lewis, was established in 1874, built I believe, almost on the identical spot where I had built the trading post in 1874. Near this military post gradually sprang up a town, which is now Lewistown, the county seat of Fergus County.
"In 1875 Colonel Ludlow made a military reconnaissance from Carroll through the Judith Basin to the Yellowstone Park and in his report is found the oldest map of the basin."
The election which brought Lewistown officially into the category of incorporated cities and towns was ordered by the board of county commissioners on petitions present pursuant to the statutes. This election was held May 6, 1899, and is recorded in the commission's minutes of a meeting held by the commissioners under date of May 8, 1899. At that time full data was recorded concerning the election, and the canvass of votes showed 115 votes for incorporation and 93 against. The commissioners then ordered an election of officers for the three wards of the city, which wards had been fixed at the time of the canvass of votes. June 19, 1899, was designated as the date of the election. Later this was postponed to July 22, on which date the first officers of the town were elected.
Just what was the actual population of Lewistown in 1899 or in 1900 when the official census was taken is a matter of unofficial conjecture. Probably about 980 in 1899; certainly not in excess of 1188 as it was reported by the official census of 1900. In 1902, when I arrived in the city, it was not, if any larger. The first city council consisted of a remarkable group of men. John P. Barnes, one of the large stockholders of the Barnes-King Mining Co. a large - if not the largest - gold mining company at Kendall, was the first mayor. The aldermen were W. H. Culver, Wm. Forsyth, Mathew Regan, W. B. Miner, John M Parrent and James P. Corcoran. James (Jim) Weaver was town marshal. These men were all highly respected citizens, and were all part of the community when I arrived in Lewistown 46 years ago. The late George W. Cook was the second mayor of the city.
Lewistown remained an inland town until the fall of 1903, when the "Jawbone" railroad extended its line here from Harlowton. It was not until 1908 that rail service was established to Great Falls and Billings, accessible to Lewistown.
The old style leather spring stage coach supplied the lack of rails, and continued long after the line was extended from Harlowton. The jerk line freight teams supplied the stores with groceries and other provisions up to the time of the advent of the railroads, and even for a considerable time afterward.
Our western literature abounds with picturesque descriptions of these modes of conveyance and it would be an act of supererogation to try to add more than the impression they made upon a tender foot - or as he was called in Lewistown 46 or 50 years ago, a pilgrim from the middle west. Such a one entered a world existing heretofore only in imagination. The near casualties of a 65 mile stagecoach ride were easily obscured by the thrill of riding behind a six-horse team of tough, spirited western broncs, as they raced over the unfenced prairies.
With the coming of the homesteader came the change from the days of the range rider, the roundup, the garb and mannerisms of the old time cowpuncher, to fenced fields, waving grain, windmills, paved streets and progressive cities.
Lewistown had decided in 1899 to become a city. She was already the county seat of an empire almost as large as the New England states, stretching from the Musselshell on the east the south, to the Missouri river and the Belt mountains on the north and west.
The amazing thing to an outsider was the culture to be found in a little town far out in the heart of the boundless prairies. There seemed to be more than a fair sprinkling of highly educated men and women who for some good and honorable reason had unfettered their souls in the wilderness. There was a Shakespeare club, an Astronomy club conducted with the dignity, zeal and learning displayed in big cities. To their own Culver's theatre, located just east of Cooley's Chevrolet garage, came road shows, lecturers of renown, and entertainment of the highest type of the time. Two Progressive newspapers were published in the town. The mining camps of Maiden, Gilt Edge and Kendall were flourishing and prosperous. Merchandising in Lewistown was conducted on a large scale. Two banks were operating, one since 1887 had cared for the needs of the early ranchers who had settled in the valleys along the streams such as the Judith, Warm Spring creek, Big Spring creek, Beaver creek, Cottonwood creek, McDonald creek, Flatwillow and the Musselshell.
In the 1880's John M. Vrooman and Charles S. Fell had established the Mineral Argus at the lively mining camp of Maiden, the longtime metropolis of the county. For western journalism, the files of this old paper are commended as good reading of the doings and accomplishments of an isolated American community in the far west 65 years ago. Later on the Mineral Argus came to Lewistown bearing the name of the Fergus County Argus, and became one of the influential newspapers of Montana. Four years after the incorporation of Lewistown, Tom Stout, who played a conspicuous part in journalistic circles of Montana for almost a half a century, thereafter was added to the reportorial staff of the Argus, and later head his own Fergus County Democrat, besides representing his state in congress back in the teens. His talents as an editorial writer have promoted him to that position with the Billings Gazette, one of Montana's most influential papers.
The progress and development of Lewistown has, of course, been coordinated with the varying prosperity of agricultural and mineral development of her trade territory.
It is a long step in the life of the city from a population of 980 to 8,000 such as we probably have at the present time.
Lewistown, like any other city, must be appraised by the character and fiber of her people, by their culture, enterprise and industry, by what they have done, and are determined to do with what they have to work with. Her churches, her schools, her public buildings, her paved streets, the splendid water supply, sewer disposal and all we have done in the line of progress stand as monuments by which we can be gauged. So long as we realize that we have not attained our objective in any of these aspects, and keep on adding to or improving the things we have secured, we will be following the path of healthy progress. Lewistown has always developed leaders of discernment and ability, and it can safely be predicted she will continue to do so. Back from the very beginning we can see a long line of ambitious, cultured and energetic men and women who have come and gone leaving their work in the line of inspiration as builders, and in the culture we enjoy. Looking back down this space of 50 years produces a feeling of nostalgia. There is a vast difference in the atmosphere of civic life now than in that day. After all, however, the thread and pattern is about the same. Ninety-three out of 208 didn't want to take the step from an unorganized village to municipal status. Almost half of the voters registered against it. But what are we to say of that large group, who by their absence from the polls, showed their utter indifference to what was going on in their community.
Here we are now bound to the mistakes of the past, unless we can change them--and some of them cannot be changed. The mistakes we make will better those who come after us.

Judge DeKalb Reviews History of Lewistown from Founding
Editor's note: Have you wondered why Lewistown's streets are on an angle, instead of going
north and south and east and west?
Judge Leonard DeKalb, pioneer attorney answered this puzzler and told much of the history of
Lewistown in a recent talk he gave.
Since the history was such a complete one, and provides a real addition to the written records of
this community, his speech is reported in full, as follows:
Lewistown has been an incorporated city for 50 years. That is only a milestone in her history.
The original townsite of Lewistown was platted on a portion of the patented homestead of
Francis A. Janeaux, by William T. McFarland, in 1882. The Janeaux homestead was one of the
first patented in the Judith Basin. The patent is dated October 10, 1882.
William T. McFarland was a chain man with a Northern Pacific survey party when that railroad
was projected through the Territory of Montana. So little was he was versed in the art ofland
surveys that his first survey described land a quarter of a mile away. When I came to Lewistown
four years after Lewistown became an incorporated city, McFarland was keeping bachelor
quarters at the intersection of Janeaux and Fourth Ave., where the filling station of Neal Smith is
now located, and where he was ekeing out an existence as a justice of the peace.
Just why Lewistown was laid out an angle has been the subject of speculation for at least 50
years. It was not even platted on an angle of 45 degrees. In the various surveys since that time,
the different engineers have determined the angle as 46 degrees 40 minutes, or some other angle
not consistent at all with McFarland's idea. About 1912 McFarland was committed to the asylum
at Warm Springs, where he later died.
Dr. L.A. Lapalme, a physician who was located at Lewistown as early as 1882, and for many
years afterwards, throws considerable light upon the peculiar bias of our streets and their
deviation from the land surveys and gives us the probably explanation of the first mapping of the
original townsite, which likely was followed later by McFarland when he prepared the plat for
recording. He wrote the following interesting explanation:
"In 1881 and 1882 a certain number of people had suggested to F.A. Janeaux, that his place
being a good site for a trading point, he ought to layout a certain portion of his land for a village.
He put off the matter until the summer of 1882, when he proved up on his land. Contemplating
the erection of a building for his store and as the school trustees were to build a school house he
concluded to plat a portion of his land and asked me to do the work. "At that time a part of his
farn1 was fenced in and under cultivation: it was that piece comprised between the southeast line
of Main Street, the creek and the south line of the 40. As we did not figure on a town, but only
expected a small village of 10 to 15 houses. Mr. Janeaux did not want to derange his field, so I
took the fence for a starting line. This is the reason why the streets of Lewistown are not running
with the main points of the compass. With a tape line I measured the blocks on each side of Main
Street and made a map--mining camp style--without a survey."